H.O.W. Academy

We experience emotional distress in all sorts of ways—as sadness, anxiety, addictions, unproductive obsessions, unwanted compulsions, repetitive self-sabotaging behaviors, physical ailments, lack of motivation, and various angry, bleak, and agitated moods.
What helps relieve this distress? What helps a person to heal? The brain has an automatic default mode and unless you use free will to create NEW patterns of thought, you may stay STUCK and unable to heal emotionally. If you have been on the healing journey for any length of time, you have undoubtedly come to realize, that healing is NOT easy and can be incredibly difficult!

Everyone carries emotional baggage! Now, imagine removing that 60-pound bag from your back and think about how fast and agile you will feel. Think about how much faster you can climb and grow when your mind and heart are free from pain. We’ve all heard, “healing takes time”, “healing is a forever journey”, and “healing is HARD”…all to be accurately true. Given these truths, it’s understandable and not surprising why we opt-out of the healing journey and take the path of least resistance. Unfortunately, when we knowingly and unknowingly decide to ignore our mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being, we will find ourselves on a different journey; one that will result in an unhealthy and detrimental emotional life-cycle.

We live in a climate where “instant gratification and instant results” take center stage. To add, we would much prefer to attain these gratifications and results with very little work or effort. As it pertains to emotional healing, I wish we could help everyone achieve healing instantly. But, because we are dealing with emotional pain or even trauma, we have to slow down and take it one step at a time. The truth is, the emotional healing journey is different and unique to the individual. Diving right into the deep end, to face your deepest hurts isn’t usually the best or sustainable approach to achieve long-term change and healing.

Indeed, healing takes time and can be difficult, which is why we would like to offer a unique ground-breaking solution in how to approach the emotional healing process. Thus, the birth of H.O.W. Academy: Healing Our Wounds the Agile Way! This methodology will calm your fears, lessen your anxieties, provide a clear and concise timeline, and promote gradual iterative success points along your journey. H.O.W. Academy’s founding premise, “We integrate the fundamentals of agile philosophy to deliver small increments of emotional health and stability in the least time possible.”

Passionate does not adequately describe this PURPOSED part of my personal spiritual journey. It is my sincere hope that everyone at some point in their life will embark upon their healing journey and invest in their emotional health. With that, it was my desire to create and offer a unique approach to the healing journey.  As a Certified Agile Coach (ACC), Scrum Master (CSM) and professional Agile practitioner, it became glaringly apparent that I could seamlessly incorporate my professional expertise and experience into my personal-purposed journey.

So, let’s dive into H.O.W. Academy: Healing Our Wounds the Agile Way! Let’s first explore the concept of Agile. Agile thinking has its roots in software development and can be defined as a methodology that focuses on incremental development which is based on continuous feedback and responsiveness to change. In laymen’s terms, Agile is a way of working and thinking that allows you to make changes as you go and adapt to meet changing needs and requests. H.O.W. Academy adopts the Agile methodology in how we approach your healing process and journey. This six weeks journey will demonstrate how to release old and new traumas, begin the healing journey, and rewrite your past in order to build a healthier and more fulfilling future. There are 7 Healing Modules framed around 4 Agile Pillars and based on 7 Principles that will empower you and drive your agile healing:

4 Agile Healing Pillars:

1. Visioning – iteration planning to flesh out and prioritize intimate details of the work that has to be done by sketching out tasks, sub-tasks, acceptance criteria, risks, and impediments. Foster intentional discussions and gather consensus and commitment on the plan of action. Effective planning significantly increases your chances of success in accomplishing the desired goals.

2. Accountability – time-boxed check-ins via video conference to address progress. You should be able to answer the following 3 questions:

-What have I completed or accomplished?
-What will I work on next?
-Am I blocked by anything?

3. Review – showcase your hard work – it’s demo time! This is the time we celebrate your wins, accomplishments, demonstrate work finished within the iteration, and get immediate feedback and reinforcement. Remember, work should be fully demonstrable and meet your established acceptance criteria in order to be considered complete and ready to showcase in the review.

4. Retrospective – being Agile is about getting quick feedback to enhance and make your healing journey better and more productive. The retrospective is designed to help you understand by answering the following questions:

-What went well?
-What did not go well?
-What could you or we have done differently?
-Which tools and techniques proved to be useful?

7 Principles of Agile Healing:

1. Realistic and Manageable Goals
2. Flexibility
3. Adaptability
4. Measurable Progress Benchmarks
5. Iterative Checkpoints
6. Continuous Improvement
7. Celebrate Iterative WINS!

In my humble opinion, embracing, adapting, and applying Healing the Agile Way is life-changing because it’s the ultimate way to self-actualization. Maslow defined self-actualization as “self-fulfillment” – “the full realization of one’s potential” and of one’s “true-self.” Upon the completion of our program, you will have gained valuable resources, tools, skills, and practical techniques that you can apply in your life immediately and as you travel along your healing journey. Everything in the Academy is designed to help empower you…to heal you…to make you whole. My commitment is to help bring out the greatest version and expression of YOU!

When You Heal, Your Life Will Take Off – Time to Soar!